A more polished and entertaining second installment covers much of the same ground as the first.
In the second of Hoy’s (Darkness and Light: Rise of the Omans, 2015) fantasy series, humans may hold the key to the survival of powerful beings from another world.
Having suffered betrayal, Auron, king of the Omans, ordered his people, the children of Light, back to Sonos. They’re returning from two pieces of dark matter, Luna and Terra, where the Omans, hoping to create new light by igniting the cores, were overrun by the Darkness and its Hollowed Minions. There was a life-form, however, on Terra, and they call themselves Humans, who are inexplicably thriving without light. Auron believes that the Humans can create new light to assure his people’s continued existence. On Sonos, lead engineer Relix reveals that she saved a Human male and female, but because their fragile bodies can’t survive outside of Terra’s atmosphere, Auron’s determined to return to them to their home planet. The king assembles another crew, including Auron’s lightmate, Akina. The plan is to reignite the cores of both Luna and Terra, where they may once again have to face off against the Darkness and Hollowed Minions, who thrive on mercilessly extinguishing the Omans’ lights. Championed by the Protector, who watches over the children of Light, Auron and the rest, with any luck, will vanquish their enemies and secure their future by keeping the Humans safe. Hoy’s sophomore outing shows signs of improvement over the preceding novel. The cast, for starters, is more clearly delineated. Merek’s got eyes for cook Osheida and vies for her attention, and one individual finds a way onto the ship, defying the king’s orders to stay on Sonos. The series’ already apparent religious theme (Omans strive “never to surrender to the Darkness”) becomes more pronounced and perhaps a bit too transparent: the two comatose Humans are called Etam and Ayva. Hoy injects stellar genre elements, including griffins and unicorns, and loads the plot with a good number of battle scenes. The story often feels like a retread, however, as the Omans’ mission is essentially the same as the first: create new light on Luna and Terra while contending with/resisting the Darkness.
A more polished and entertaining second installment covers much of the same ground as the first.Pub Date: Oct. 17, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5246-4510-6
Page Count: 257
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Jan. 10, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.
Are we not men? We are—well, ask Bigfoot, as Brooks does in this delightful yarn, following on his bestseller World War Z(2006).
A zombie apocalypse is one thing. A volcanic eruption is quite another, for, as the journalist who does a framing voice-over narration for Brooks’ latest puts it, when Mount Rainier popped its cork, “it was the psychological aspect, the hyperbole-fueled hysteria that had ended up killing the most people.” Maybe, but the sasquatches whom the volcano displaced contributed to the statistics, too, if only out of self-defense. Brooks places the epicenter of the Bigfoot war in a high-tech hideaway populated by the kind of people you might find in a Jurassic Park franchise: the schmo who doesn’t know how to do much of anything but tries anyway, the well-intentioned bleeding heart, the know-it-all intellectual who turns out to know the wrong things, the immigrant with a tough backstory and an instinct for survival. Indeed, the novel does double duty as a survival manual, packed full of good advice—for instance, try not to get wounded, for “injury turns you from a giver to a taker. Taking up our resources, our time to care for you.” Brooks presents a case for making room for Bigfoot in the world while peppering his narrative with timely social criticism about bad behavior on the human side of the conflict: The explosion of Rainier might have been better forecast had the president not slashed the budget of the U.S. Geological Survey, leading to “immediate suspension of the National Volcano Early Warning System,” and there’s always someone around looking to monetize the natural disaster and the sasquatch-y onslaught that follows. Brooks is a pro at building suspense even if it plays out in some rather spectacularly yucky episodes, one involving a short spear that takes its name from “the sucking sound of pulling it out of the dead man’s heart and lungs.” Grossness aside, it puts you right there on the scene.
A tasty, if not always tasteful, tale of supernatural mayhem that fans of King and Crichton alike will enjoy.Pub Date: June 16, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-9848-2678-7
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2020
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.
Brown completes his science-fiction trilogy with another intricately plotted and densely populated tome, this one continuing the focus on a rebellion against the imperious Golds.
This last volume is incomprehensible without reference to the first two. Briefly, Darrow of Lykos, aka Reaper, has been “carved” from his status as a Red (the lowest class) into a Gold. This allows him to infiltrate the Gold political infrastructure…but a game’s afoot, and at the beginning of the third volume, Darrow finds himself isolated and imprisoned for his insurgent activities. He longs both for rescue and for revenge, and eventually he gets both. Brown is an expert at creating violent set pieces whose cartoonish aspects (“ ‘Waste ’em,’ Sevro says with a sneer” ) are undermined by the graphic intensity of the savagery, with razors being a favored instrument of combat. Brown creates an alternative universe that is multilayered and seething with characters who exist in a shadow world between history and myth, much as in Frank Herbert’s Dune. This world is vaguely Teutonic/Scandinavian (with characters such as Magnus, Ragnar, and the Valkyrie) and vaguely Roman (Octavia, Romulus, Cassius) but ultimately wholly eclectic. At the center are Darrow, his lover, Mustang, and the political and military action of the Uprising. Loyalties are conflicted, confusing, and malleable. Along the way we see Darrow become more heroic and daring and Mustang, more charismatic and unswerving, both agents of good in a battle against forces of corruption and domination. Among Darrow’s insights as he works his way to a position of ascendancy is that “as we pretend to be brave, we become so.”
An ambitious and satisfying conclusion to a monumental saga.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-345-53984-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Del Rey/Ballantine
Review Posted Online: Dec. 8, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2015
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